The present invention relates to processes and apparatus for identifying portions of a video footage. Once identified, the portions can be used for multiple purposes. For example, they can be recalled selectively based on their properties, compiled to form a shortened form of the footage, or used as the basis for video editing of the footage such as by using them as a basis for combination with an audio soundtrack.
Modern devices for recording video footage make it easy to accumulate very large amounts of material which take a very long time to review or process. For example, removing uninteresting footage from within shots taken during a holiday can be a time-consuming process. Similarly, security cameras record vast quantities of footage within which only relatively short sequences containing unusual events are of interest afterwards.
Currently, video editing systems do not provide any form of high level segmentation, but are based on extraction of key frames from the footage based on color histograms and motion detection.